


two boy geniuses walk into a frat house

by starkslovemail



Series: earth-207, the stark-rhodes timeline [1]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Additional Warnings In Author's Note, Angst with a Happy Ending, First Meetings, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, MIT Era, Protective James "Rhodey" Rhodes, Tony Stark Needs a Hug
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-08
Updated: 2019-09-08
Packaged: 2020-10-12 03:21:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,566
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20557379
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/starkslovemail/pseuds/starkslovemail
Summary: There were too many white people at this damn party.





	two boy geniuses walk into a frat house

**Author's Note:**

> tw for implied past non-con with someone drunk and underage and attempted/premeditated non-con with someone drunk and underage. it only goes as far as a belt being unbuckled, but it's all very slimy, so keep that in mind when reading and take care of yourselves <3

There were too many white people at this damn party.

James had no idea why he let his not-quite friend Oliver drag him out of the library and across the river to the SigEp house. It was supposed to be “the party of the semester,” and SigEps had this whole thing about being “balanced men,” but from what James could see, the balance meant that they drank both beer and hard liquor without discrimination.

Don’t get him wrong, James loved a good time, but he also loved not nursing a hangover in his eight a.m. AFROTC leadership class. Been there, done that, and the t-shirt he got wasn’t even that cool. 

Maybe if it wasn’t a Wednesday night, he’d be more willing, but tonight… tonight was not the night.

But there he was, sipping on a drink in a corner of the SigEp basement, eyes roaming around the room for something interesting enough to keep him there.

The interesting thing happened soon enough.

There was this light, airy giggle that caught his attention from across the room. James’s eyes slid over to a group of white guys feeding shots to what James could only describe as a fetus.

A tiny little brunette that had _no_ business downing that much alcohol was sitting on the lap of a taller, blonde guy. The blonde guy was playing with his hair idly as he talked to the rest of the guys around them, ignoring the boy in his lap as he talked a mile a minute. He had an excited smile on his face and flushed cheeks, and his hands were gesticulating wildly, like he was about to start flitting around the room. Regardless of what he was saying, it didn’t look like anyone was paying enough attention to do anything but give him a shot every time he stopped to catch his breath.

Something about him was familiar to James, but he couldn’t tell what. 

“That’s the Stark kid.” 

James turned his head to the girl next to him, “What?”

“That kid in the corner with the SigEps?” The girl, James thought her name was Bella, clarified. “That’s the Stark kid. He’s like, a multi-millionaire boy genius.” She shrugged, taking a sip of her drink, “He’s cute, but I think he’s like, twelve, so.”

James vaguely remembered hearing about some triple major that was even younger than _he_ was, but it was said as an insult about how he wasn’t all that special for being at MIT at fifteen, so he had ignored it for the most part.

Seeing Stark now though, James made a mental note to keep an eye on the giggly kid in the corner the rest of the night.

James checked in on Stark about forty-five minutes later.

He wasn’t giggling so loudly anymore, but he had this dopey smile on his face as he leaned against the blonde guy, no longer in his lap. The blonde guy was a little bit younger than the rest now that James could see him better, maybe a fellow freshman. He had an arm slung around Stark casually, but he wasn’t talking to the kid. Instead, he was talking to the other guys around him, chuckles and smirks all around that gave James a very bad feeling in his gut. 

The blonde nodded to the biggest guy in the group, a smirk on his face. When the guy went to unbuckle his belt, James shot up from his seat so quickly that his head started to spin a bit.

Bella, still with him, didn’t do anything but mutter a _good luck_, but James couldn’t find it in him to fault her. She was probably as tiny as Stark was, and she wouldn’t be much help if a fight broke out. He headed to the opposite corner of the basement, his mama’s voice in his head telling him to make sure he took care of the people that needed to be taken care of. Most people were more specific, telling James to look out for the girls around campus, but Mama was different. 

Mama told him to look after _everyone_, and that was exactly what James was going to do. 

As he went over to the circle jerk, James was going to consider his options, but then he made eye contact with Stark. 

The kid looked like Bambi with those big doe eyes and skinny frame. He had a pretty face, nice, long lashes, but his entire being screamed _I’m not legal_ so loudly that even to James’s freshly sixteen-year-old mind, doing anything remotely sexual felt all sorts of wrong.

What grown-ass men saw in jailbait like that, James would never know, but maybe that was the point. It was fucking disgusting.

All plans flew out the window when he got a good look at Stark. He nudged his way into the crowd of SigEps and tried to pull the kid up. 

The guy with his arm around Stark’s shoulder gave him a look, a light glare that would have been much more threatening if his cheeks hadn’t been flushed and his eyes unfocused, “Wait your turn, man, he’s not going anywhere.”

“I don’t want a turn with a statutory rape lawsuit,” James rolled his eyes. “Also, I’m not a pedophile.” 

“Hebephile,” Stark slurred out the correction, giggling in amusement as he did so. “And if you wait a few months, you’ll be an _ephebophile._” He stumbled over the pronunciation, but his carefree smile stayed put.

James had no desire to find out why Stark knew the difference, so he just yanked the boy up from his place on the loveseat, “You’ve had too much to drink.” 

And it was only then when the fantastically balanced men of Sigma Phi Epsilon realized that their entertainment for the night was being threatened.

The biggest of the assholes put a hand on James’s shoulder, and he looked down to see the word _Balanced_ wrapped around a finger on a silver ring. James snorted on reflex, but the hand tightened on his shoulder threateningly. “Where do you think you’re going with our guest?”

If James was going to get his ass beat, so be it. “Your _guest_ is jailbait, I’m doing you a favor.” He shrugged the hand off of his shoulder and gave Stark a tug, “Come on.”

“Not if he consents,” and if James wasn’t already creeped out by the blonde guy who looked like he was pimping Stark out for the evening, he was now. What part of _statutory rape _did he not understand? The wannabe pimp reached out and took Stark’s other hand, “We’re just having fun, aren’t we, Tony?”

When James looks to Stark (Tony?), he could see the boy thinking it over, see the gears turning in his mind despite the hazy fog of alcohol that was obviously clouding his judgment. And then Stark gave him the weirdest look James had ever seen before yanking his wrist from James’s hand and settling back into the wannabe pimp’s lap.

Wannabe pimp, who it looked like was about to be a _successful pimp_, gave James a smirk because they both knew nothing could be done now. He pet Stark’s hair, smirk widening as the boy went pliant in his arms. He looked to the other assholes around them, “Where were we, gentlemen?”

And James wanted to puke.

Stark, despite how obviously inebriated and painfully underaged as he was, made his “choice,” and no matter what happened now, even if things went south, there were witnesses. Witnesses that would say James tried to get Stark to leave, but he wanted to stay, and so whatever happened only happened because Stark _wanted_ it to happen. The balanced men of Sigma Phi Epsilon would get off with nothing but a slap on the wrist, and even that would be a miracle.

Before James could turn tail out of shame while the other guys jeered at him like a bunch of playground bullies, Stark met his eyes for a brief, purposeful moment before, to James’s _complete and utter shock_, he puked all over himself and on the shoes of the pimp and at least three other SigEps.

The reaction was instantaneous. 

“Fucking _gross_.”

“What the hell, Stone?” 

“You said he didn’t have a gag reflex!” 

“He doesn’t!” the pimp (Stone?) sputtered back, obviously just as disgusted. He jerked Stark off of him, “What the _hell_ was that?” 

Stark gave him an innocent, vomit-stained, smile, “Sorry, Ty!”

Stone pulled a face like he was going to puke next, shoving the boy away from him, “Go clean yourself up, you’re disgusting.”

“Don’t bother, we’re done here,” the guy was already redoing his belt. He gave Stone a look, “Clean this shit up.” Then he grabbed Stark by the collar and shoved him into James, “You want him? Take him.”

James got an armful of Stark and a nose full of that putrid ass vomit stench, but all he did was adjust his hold on the kid and lead him out of the SigEp house.

James hadn’t known what to think when Stark had steered them towards the A-Chi-O house. 

Then, when one of the sisters opened the door, she took one look at Stark and ushered them in without any sort of preamble. The second they were inside, three of the sisters scooped Stark up and whisked him away before James could even blink.

He stood in the foyer awkwardly, arms crossed, before looking to the girl who had opened the door, “Does this happen a lot?”

“More than I want it to,” she sighed in reply. She nodded to him, “I’m Maisie, VP of Philanthropy.”

“James,” he nodded back. “So… what’s the story?”

“With Tony?” Maisie’s face clouded over and she let out an even heavier sigh than the first one, “He’s a sweetheart, tutors some of the freshmen.” She frowned, “It’s his roommate that’s the problem, this guy named Ty Stone.”

“Blonde hair, grey eyes, really likes when Stark sits on his lap?” James guessed in a deadpan.

Maisie drooped ever so slightly at the recognition, “He was there tonight?”

“Yeah, he was trying to pimp Stark off to a bunch of SigEps,” James spat. “We only got out of there because he puked on half of them.”

Maisie looked at him strangely, “Tony can hold his alcohol just fine.”

James side-eyed her, “_That’s_ what’s wrong with all this?”

“No, I—” She cut herself off, emotions bubbling up underneath the surface. “Ty does this a lot. Bringing Tony to parties and passing him around like candy to anyone interested.” Maisie shrugged, nervous and a little bit frustrated, “Tony usually comes here alone, so when you showed up, I hoped it was different this time.”

“It _was_ different this time,” James corrected her. “Nothing happened. I went over when one of the guys was, uh, _getting ready_, and then they kicked us out when Stark threw up.”

Maisie gave him a small relieved smile, “Thanks. No one usually does much.” She looked around the foyer, a distant look in her eyes, “Our president brought him back at the beginning of the semester.” Her eyes went dark, “Something happened that time, and no one did anything to stop it. Tony didn’t want to do anything about it, but we wanted to help.”

“So, you let him come here and clean up when he needs to?” James filled in the blanks.

Maisie nodded, “And stay the night if he doesn’t want to go back to Ty. If he’s on the other side of the river, he goes to the Theta house” She shrugged, “It’s not perfect, but it’s better than nothing.”

“Well, now he can stay in Baker, with me,” James nodded to himself. He let out a heavy sigh, the night’s events playing through his mind, “I don’t know how anyone can look at him and not do something. He’s _twelve_.”

“I’m fourteen,” Stark’s prepubescent voice corrected, “and a half.”

When James turned to look at him, he was even less convinced of that than he was in the SigEp house.

His entire outfit had been pilfered from the sorority. He was wearing a giant, grey A-Chi-O pullover that swamped him, white shorts barely poking out of the bottom. His face was clean and still impossibly young, a mix of tired and drunk as he let out a quiet yawn. He shuffled forward in a pair of white converse with little black hearts drawn in with Sharpie, fiddling with a half-empty water bottle.

The sister who came out with him enveloped him in a hug, Tony reaching up on his toes, “Bring it back on Saturday, okay, love?” He nodded, his reply muffled by her shoulder.

When they broke apart, she turned him over to James, fixing him with a stern look. “Make sure he gets some sleep tonight, okay? He’s got diff EQ at ten.”

James did a double-take, looking down at Tony, “With _Stonewell?”_

Tony looked up at him, eyes narrowing slightly, more confusion in his gaze than anything else, “Yeah… why?”

“I’m in the same section,” James said thoughtfully. Now that he knew, he could easily place where he’d seen the younger boy before: two rows in front of him, never paying attention to a word Stonewell was saying.

“Great, you can go together,” Maisie clapped her hands together, a finality to words. She steered them towards the door with an invitation to their study session on Saturday evening. No alcohol was allowed at sorority events, no matter how informal, so even though anyone was welcome, _certain_ _people_ tended to stay away.

It didn’t take much for James to figure out who _certain people_ was referring to. He and Tony both promised to show up before heading back to Harvard bridge.

“I’ve got a double in Baker,” James said conversationally as they continued on to the bridge. “My roommate had a nervous breakdown in September and left, so the other bed’s free.” Tony let out a thoughtful hum, so James continued, “You can crash there tonight… or any other night your roommate is being a dick.”

“So, I should just move in with you?” Tony let out a laugh, just as light and airy as the alcohol-fueled giggles James had heard earlier that night. 

James shrugged casually, “If you want to.”

Tony actually appeared to be thinking it over before he abruptly paused and shook his head, scoffing lightly, “Don’t think the powers that be could get behind that one.”

James had questions, but he knew it was none of his damn business, so he kept his mouth shut. “If the powers that be ever change their mind, let me know.” And, oh, they never actually introduced themselves, did they? “I’m James by the way, James Rhodes.”

Tony looked at him carefully before pronouncing, “Rhodey.”

James snorted, an amused smile teasing at his lips, “We’re already at the nickname stage?”

“Maaaybe,” Tony drawled back impishly. He gave James a hopeful look, one that reminded him, yet again, just how impossibly young the kid was. But when James blinked, Tony looked away, almost like he was hiding. He fiddled with his water bottle, “Too soon?”

And at that moment, James made a conscious decision.

He adjusted his arm around Tony’s shoulder (and when exactly did he become Tony?), pulling the smaller boy close, “Nah, I think it’s right on time.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> not all the other chapters are as heavy, i promise ;-; there's fluff and good times bc that's what they deserve!!
> 
> rhodeytony week starts tomorrow, so i probably won't update until that's done, but i hope you enjoyed this chapter <3

**Author's Note:**

> this used to be the iron husband conspiracy, but i'm doing the series a little differently now, so things have been swapped around!! sorry for any confusion!


End file.
